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North Carolina legislators completed their court-ordered redistricting this week. Lawmakers were working on a swift turnaround and, for more transparency, the mapping sessions were livestreamed. The process drew criticism and praise. Becki Gray of the John Locke Foundation and Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch discuss the meaning of "independent" redistricting and whether anything has changed with lawmakers' return to consideration of Medicaid expansion. 
 

The journalism community is in mourning over the loss of veteran broadcaster Cokie Roberts. Considered one of the founding mothers of NPR, Roberts blazed trails for women in journalism while helping to set the tone and standard for the emerging field of public radio.

The U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies accusing them of misusing federal funds in their programming.

Artists Alice Gerrard, Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves each has a rich musical career in her own right. But when they come together as a trio, the musicians open up space to exchange songs and stories across generations.

I’ve lived in Chapel Hill my whole life. I live with my mom, dad, older brother Alex, two dogs, Rex and Bear, and my grandmother.

We've teamed up with Come Hear NC on a podcast series that explores North Carolina music one song at a time. This time, Pinecone Director William Lewis tell us why he loves Chatham County Line's 'Living In Raleigh Now.'

The International Bluegrass Music Association Festival takes place next weekend in...Raleigh.

The World Health Organization now officially lists workplace burnout as an occupational syndrome in its International Classification of Diseases manual.

Elon University joined other schools, community groups and law enforcement officials across the country for an inaugural National Day of Reconciliation. The idea was to improve relations between police and people of color.

People constantly quote and misquote cinema — sometimes without ever having seen the referenced film. Think about lines like “You had me at hello”; “Hasta la vista, baby”; or “Play it again, Sam.” Sometimes the words many of us repeat are never spoken in the movie, and other times they are phrases that actors made up on the spot. Whether it’s from Monty Python, Whoopi Goldberg, or a Spielberg flick, movie quotes are the way we map our cultural common ground.

The Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly on Tuesday finished its court-ordered task of redrawing dozens of state house and senate districts in a very undramatic fashion. The House voted for the Senate remap and the Senate approved the House proposal.

The task comes two weeks after a dramatic, first-of-its-kind ruling on September 3 when a Wake County Superior Court judicial panel declared Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly had gerrymandered legislative districts for excessively partisan gains and, therefore, violated the state constitution.

The North Carolina General Assembly is again sending redrawn district maps back to the court for review.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr weighs in and remembers former Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake, who wrote another precedent-setting decision on redistricting. Orr also has an eye on a proposal in California that would let college athletes earn compensation from sponsorships.

Server rooms are boring. Stacks of computers with blinking lights. Cords in red, yellow, black and blue held together with zip ties. They're chilly from the extra air conditioning that keeps them cool.

In Cary's town hall, the server room is deep inside a building under constant lock. Town Information Technology Security Manager Erik Chapman had to swipe his badge and enter a number code to get in. The whirring sound of dozens of computers running at the same time rushed out of the door as it opened.

North Carolina will soon have new legislative maps. The previous maps were tossed out after a three-judge panel unanimously declared them unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders.

Ninth-grader Greta Thunberg sat outside the Swedish legislature in 2018 and declared her commitment to strike each Friday to demand that her government undertake a radical response to climate change. At that moment she became the face and voice of a generation of youth anxious and motivated to do something about climate change.

XKCD is a stick-figure webcomic. While the drawings might be simple, the ideas explore universal concepts like romance, sarcasm, math, and language. The exchanges between stick figures can capture the imagination and attention span of a child while wading into complex astrophysics and existential dilemmas. 

How do local artists make it big these days? In the age of recommendation algorithms and music streaming, can a radio DJ spin an indie artist into fame? Miriam Tolbert is trying to do just that by slowly turning the attention of a commercial station back to the local scene. 

Even for relatively chaotic North Carolina, it was a wild week in state politics.

There was a major vote that caught many by surprise, court-ordered redistricting carried on, and a judicial pioneer passed away.

Rob Schofield, of NC Policy Watch, and Mitch Kokai, of the John Locke Foundation, discuss those stories, as well as an incident involving a state senator, a journalist, and a phone that went flying.

When I started the summer, I wanted to write about the struggle of black LGBT youth in churches that didn’t approve of their lifestyle and persecuted them for their sexuality. 

Former North Carolina State Supreme Court Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr. died Thursday at age 85. Known as a law and order conservative who sometimes wore his pistol in court, Lake spearheaded the Actual Innoncence Commission which gave birth to North Carolina’s Innocence Inquiry Commission and helped make the state a leader in overturning wrongful convictions.